


Our Way

by Jaseish (Kymopoleia)



Series: Take My Hand [9]
Category: LoliRock (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, Post canon, he's alive because i said so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 16:38:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12039942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kymopoleia/pseuds/Jaseish
Summary: The clinking of glasses, the tender pull of heartstrings as the band plays. It's a party, but the guest of honor has just run off.





	Our Way

Her face hurt from smiling too much.

This was not a typical complaint. Talia usually was fine smiling, or she’d drop the pretenses and let her eyes do the speaking. Tonight was not a normal night, though. Everyone’s eyes were on her, and there was nothing more overwhelming than that.

The song ends, and she nods breathlessly as she pulls from her dancing partner. Some Voltan, perhaps, with a name she doesn’t know and a face she won’t remember. Too many people, bearing into the room and taking her hand to kiss and to touch…

It was all too much.

She hadn’t gone through a war for this. She hadn’t spent four Ephedian years with Iris on Earth, training the princess, fighting the twins, to get to this point.

She’d done it to come back home, sure, but she hadn’t asked to be wed.

Izira meant well, she really did. She’d mentioned the party with a smile on her face and hope in her eyes, the newly rebuilt castle glistening around them like glass. She wanted Talia to be happy, she wanted her to forget everything she’d seen, she wanted her to settle down with a partner and grow old and happy and make nieces and nephews for Izira to fall in love with and coddle.

It was admirable, and maybe Auriana or Lyna would have agreed, but Talia simply feels like a caged animal.

The dress was a bit too tight around her ribs and a bit too loose around her shoulders, the straps sliding down every time she forgot to carefully monitor them. Her hair was loose and hot and sticky on the back of her neck, the room around her pressing in hot and heavy.

Talia slid out of the action, eyes closed for just a second.

If she escaped, would anyone notice? If she just broke out of the crowd, would it be alright?

A servant passes with a tray of bubbling alcohol, and Talia steals a tall glass as she melts into the shadow.

It’d have to be alright.

The garden was only a slim hallway away, and she bursts into the clear night air with a deep sigh of relief. Finally something that was not stuffy, overly perfumed, drowning her in exotic scents and noise.

She could still hear the faint conversation through the walls, but that was alright. She didn’t mind. It was enough not to be in the middle of it.

Talia feels the straps of her dress slip down her shoulders.

She laughs once, a loud, clear burst. Who cared?

She steps down the steps into the stone path, eyes closing to take it all in. Izira had put in so much work getting the castle prepared, there’d hardly been a thing left to do when she finally arrived. Maybe it wasn’t exactly the same as when she was a child, the spider web cracks still showing the damage, but it was still her home.

The garden showed more of those cracks, far from perfect. It’d become overgrown during their absence, and as she lets her hand drift through the soft leaves, Talia lets out a sigh of relief.

The garden was beautiful. It was somewhere she’d used to come to hide from her sister when the world became too much and she needed to get away, or when she wanted to pretend like she were fighting some war all by herself. Usually the war was against her tutor, who was exasperated but understanding of the childish deviance in the act.

She opened her eyes and moved to the fountain, staring at it. Once she had crawled inside to get out of taking a bath, and had spent three times longer in the bathtub as punishment. When she was finally released the water had been like ice, sending a shiver down her spine even thinking about it now.

Talia lifts her glass of wine and tips the top towards the fountain, mouthing a gentle ‘thank you’. It had been the source of much fun in her childhood.

She drowns the glass in one long, long sip.

A breeze wafts through the space, bringing sweet scents of the herbs upwind. She giggles to herself and sets the glass down on the fountain, rubbing her palms against the body of her dress.

Izira had expressed surprise to see her hair so short, her shoulders bare, and Talia had been unable to bear telling her the cause for the change. It was hard enough to be around her sister, knowing now what she did not before. Izira was undeniably, irrevocably a force for good and freedom, but the way their relationship had been left so long ago left Talia’s skin crawling.

Izira was alive, and she still hadn’t recovered.

A pair of hands, heavy and calloused and warm, settle on her shoulders as a pair of gently chapped lips press themselves to the back of her neck, right over the ridges of her spine and just under where the wispy ends of her hair brush.

Talia stiffens, magic circles appearing.

“Shh, calm down.” A familiar voice comes from behind her. “It’s just me, princess.”

She closes her eyes and sighs heavily. “Startling me isn’t in your best interest, my love.”

“Debe…” He chastises gently, stepping to her side so she can look him in the eyes. “I never do anything in my best interest.”

Talia can’t help but giggle at the statement, a completely untrue one.

“Lev,” She leans her head onto his shoulder. “I had forgotten how much I hated these functions.”

He hums, studying the curves of the fountain that she’d just been regarding. “Then skip out on it.”

“I can’t. It’s being held for me.”

“Then that’s all the more reason to! If you hate it then you can just leave. If they miss you, too bad, it’s your party.”

She shook her head. “It isn’t that simple. Izira wants me to meet all the eligible nobles… I didn’t know how to say no.”

The blonde sighed. “You could do it simply, just tell her the truth.”

“And risk her being disappointed in me? I don’t think so.” Talia shivered as another breeze stirred the short hairs at the nape of her neck. “I can’t have that.”

“You know, from how the Queen talks about you, you hang the stars in the sky.” He replies.

Talia glanced at him sharply. It was odd, both to hear those words and to hear her sister being referred to as the Queen. She’d have to get used to that, wouldn’t she?

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re the world to her. I’m sure she wouldn’t be… disappointed in you.” He says the words carefully.

“She’s always wanted the best for me. I’ve disappointed her enough in the past, I don’t want to let her know that I…”

She wants to say ‘haven’t changed’ but the words won’t come.

Lev turns and pulls her into his chest.

“Shh, shh, it’s alright. I know how this feels, how you get. Come on.”

Her arms wind around his waist, her forehead finding the space just under his chin to press itself to his skin for comfort.

His style had changed since he moved to Xeris, something Talia had only halfway expected. He took to the loose shirts and strappy sandals in stride, though he didn’t relinquish his fingerless leather gloves. She wouldn’t ask him to.

He pets her back, a place she was so used to having be covered in hair, and she shivers into his touch. 

“I’ve got you.”

“I know…” She whispers.

“Do you ever wonder how it would be to be honest with the world?” He muses.

The garden, silent as death, doesn’t reply. The breeze rustles some leaves and makes her press closer to him.

“What do you mean?”

“If you were to tell them about us. About me.”

“I…” She didn’t want to tell him that she thought about it all the time.

“It’s fine if you don’t.” He amends hurriedly. “I’m not trying to push you. You don’t let yourself be pushed, anyways.”

Talia couldn’t help but laugh tiredly, shaking her head. “No, that’s not it. I… I do.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think?”

“Well, I think they’d think I was crazy.” She sighs. “And I think they’d wonder if you had ulterior motives.”

“The only ulterior motive I have is seeing you smile.” Lev replies.

It’s sappy, most likely untrue, but said so honestly… Her heart melts.

“And I think I wouldn’t care what they think, in the end.”

He pulls back a bit, and she looks at him.

Lev wasn’t all that much taller than herself, which made it easier to meet eyes. She smiled.

“I think if we got to that point, if we told Ephedia, that there isn’t a thing they could think that would change my mind.”

His eyes shine in the dim lighting, and he leans forward to press his forehead to hers.

They stay like that for a sweet moment, breathing in each other’s air, brushing the tips of their noses and embracing each other.

“If it came down to it,” He whispers back to her. “We will find our way… or we’ll make a way.”

Talia giggles and pulls back to smile. “That’s how you want to attack it? Our way?”

He nods.

She presses forward to steal a kiss, tender as the moonlight splashing over them and soft as the distant band.

“I think I like the sound of that.”

“You do?” He’s breathless.

“I do.”

“Well, good, ‘cause I totally just made that up.”

Talia can’t help but laugh and let her forehead fall to his shoulder. Of course he had.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm so sorry for my current trend of writing random little blurbs that don't have much to do with the fic for the summary but? i hope it's okay


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